Believe it or not, autonomous vehicles have been many decades in the making.
Even in 1939, General Motors had an exhibit called “Futurama” at the New York World’s Fair that presented a model of the world 20 years in the future. Central to this display was a system of automated highways and vast suburbs, with a focus on how automation could reduce traffic congestion and lead to the free-flowing movement of people and goods.
Since then, many autonomous vehicle concepts have popped up at various times – but they have always fell short due to technical limitations. Only recently, due to advances in technology, have self-driving cars been able to overcome three primary engineering challenges: sensing the surrounding environment, processing information, and reacting to that environment.
Today, the future for autonomous vehicles is bright, and it is expected that there will be millions of self-driving cars on the road by 2035, creating a multi-billion dollar market.
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
The following infographic comes to us from Get Off Road, and it shows the history of autonomous vehicles, how they work, the technical challenges overcome so far, and what the near-future of driverless cars may look like.
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